For much of the past decade,
policy leaders and social scientists have
grown increasingly concerned about a societal
split between those with and those
without access to computers and the Internet.
The U.S. National Telecommunications
and Information Administration
popularized a
term for this situation in the
mid-1990s: the “digital divide.”
The phrase soon became used in an
international context as well, to describe
the status of information technology from
country to country.
Demystifying
the Digital Divide
The simple binary notion of
technology haves and have-nots
doesn’t quite compute
By Mark Warschauer
TOM DRAPER DESIGN
42 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN AUGUST 2003
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LEFT TO RIGHT: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, DAVID GREEDY, PHOTODISC, PHOTODISC (top row); PHOTODISC (all photographs in second row);
PHOTODISC, PHOTODISC, MARK WARSCHAUER (third row); PHOTODISC, PHOTODISC, KEITH DANNEMILLER Corbis/SABA ( fourth row); KEITH DANNEMILLER Corbis/SABA,
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, PHOTODISC, PHOTODISC ( fifth row); PHOTODISC, PHOTODISC, VIVIAN MOOS Corbis (bottom row)
COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
Underlying disparities are real, both
within and among countries. The Benton
Foundation, which promotes the publicinterest
use of communications technology,
reports that by late 2001, 80 percent
of American families with annual household
income greater than $75,000 were
online, compared with 25 percent of the
poorest U.S. families. Total home Internet
access was 55 percent for whites, 31
percent for African-Americans and 32
percent for Hispanics. Looking at the international
picture, in most African countries
less than 1 percent of the population
is online. Not surprisingly, such disparity
correlates highly with other measures
of social and economic inequality.
Yet the simple binary description of a
divide fails to do justice to the complex
reality of various people’s differing access
and usage of digital technology. An
American who surfs the Internet on a
computer at a local library once a month
might be considered to be a digital “havenot,”
whereas someone in a developing
country with the same profile would be a
“have.” Indeed, couching the condition
in black-and-white terminology can lead
those attempting to deal with technological
inequities down the wrong path. The
late Rob Kling, who directed the Center
for Social Informatics at Indiana University,
put it well: “[The] big problem with
the ‘digital divide’ framing is that it tends
to connote ‘digital solutions,’” that is,
“computers and telecommunications,”
without a consideration of the context
into which that hardware would be put.
This line of reasoning led some to assume
that the dearth of digital access of
nations, communities and individuals
could be easily tackled by an infusion of
computers and Internet connections. Former
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
Newt Gingrich has talked
about the virtues of giving every child a
laptop computer, without offering a solid
plan for using the devices. And Bill
Gates donated computers to small-town
libraries across America, believing that
Internet connections would help stem the
exodus from rural areas. Although Internet
connection through small-town libraries
has improved people’s lives by allowing
them to stay in touch with friends
and relatives, it has not stemmed the exodus
—which largely depends on broader
factors, such as employment availability
—and may even have contributed to it
by allowing people to search for jobs in
cities. (To Gates’s and Gingrich’s credit,
they at least had the issue of technology
access on their radar screens. Gates, recognizing
the limitations of computer
technology in solving social ills, has since
gone on to donate billions of dollars to
broader health and education campaigns
around the world.)
This perspective is known in academic
circles as technological determinism,
the idea that the mere presence of technology
leads to familiar and standard applications
of that technology, which in
turn bring about social change. The Harvard
Graduate School of Education’s
Christopher Dede has termed this the
“fire” model, with its implication that a
computer, by its mere presence, will generate
learning or development, just as a
fire generates warmth. Governments, the
private sector, foundations and charities
have thus spent hundreds of millions of
dollars to bridge the perceived digital divide
by providing computers and Internet
lines to those in need, often without
sufficient attention to the social contexts
in which these technologies might be
used. (Dede notes that a better model
than fire might be clothing, which also
keeps one warm yet is tailored for individual
fit and use.)
How does this application based on
the assumption of technological determinism
turn out in practice? Over the
past few years, I have traveled around the
world to study community technology
programs in both developed and developing
countries. I have observed scores of
diverse programs and have interviewed
hundreds of participants and organizers.
As the following case studies show, two
basics became apparent: well-intentioned
programs often lead in unexpected directions,
and the worst failures occur when
people attempt to address complex social
problems with a narrow focus on provision
of equipment.
A Minimalist Approach
IN 1999 THE MUNICIPAL government
of New Delhi, in collaboration with
an Indian company called the National
Institute of Information Technology,
44 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN AUGUST 2003
¦ The concept of a “digital divide” separating those with access to computers and
communications technology from those without is simplistic and can lead to
well-meaning but incomplete attempts at a solution based on merely adding
technology to a given circumstance.
¦ In fact, people have widely varying opportunities for access to computers and
communications technology and disparate reasons for wanting the level of
access they may desire.
¦ A consideration of how people can use computers and the Internet to further the
process of social inclusion is paramount in any effort to install new technology
into an environment lacking it.
Overview/Technologic Logic
Some assumed that the dearth
of digital access could be easily tackled
by an infusion of computers.
COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
launched an experiment to provide computer
access to children in one of the
city’s poorest areas. Government officials
and representatives of the company set
up an outdoor kiosk with several computer
stations. The computers, with dialup
Internet access, were inside a locked
booth, but the monitors, joysticks and
buttons stuck out through holes and
were accessible. In line with a concept
known as minimally invasive education,
the test included no teachers or instructors.
The idea was to allow the children
unfettered daily access so they could
learn at their own pace rather than
through the directives of adults.
The program was hailed by its organizers
as a groundbreaking model for
how to bring information technology to
the world’s urban poor. Inspiring stories
circulated on the Internet about how illiterate
children taught themselves to use
computers and thus crashed the barriers
to the information age. These accounts
led to additional kiosks being set up in
other locations.
My visit to one of the New Delhi
kiosks, however, revealed a different picture.
The Internet connection seldom
functioned. The architecture of the
kiosk—based on a wall instead of a
room—made instruction or collaboration
difficult. Most poor communities in New
Delhi already have organizations that
work with children and that could have
set up educational training at a different
kind of computer center, but their participation
was neither solicited nor welcomed.
Over the nine-month duration of
the experiment, the youngsters did indeed
learn how to manipulate the joystick
and buttons. But without educational
programs and with the content primarily
in English rather than Hindi, they
mostly did what you might expect: played
games and used paint programs to draw.
Neighborhood parents felt ambivalent.
Several embraced the initiative, but
most expressed concern about the lack of
organized instruction. Some even complained
that the computer was detrimental.
“My son used to be doing very well
in school,” one parent said, “but now he
spends all his free time playing computer
games at the kiosk, and his schoolwork
is suffering.” In short, the community
came to realize that minimally invasive
education was, in practice, minimally
effective education.
Nevertheless, an overemphasis on
hardware with scant attention paid to the
pedagogical and curricular frameworks
that shape how the computers are used is
common in educational technology projects
throughout the world. But such technological
determinism has been challenged
in the academic arena by a concept
called social informatics, which
argues that technology must be considered
within a specific context that includes
hardware, software, support resources,
infrastructure, as well as people
in various roles and relationships with
one another and with other elements of
the system. And the technology and social
system continuously shape each other,
like a biological community and its
environment.
Although grassroots teachers, parents
or aid workers may be unfamiliar with
the academic term “social informatics,”
many already appreciate the implications
of an interwoven relationship of technology
and public organizations. Social informatics
has recently given birth to
“community informatics,” which also
considers unique aspects of the particular
culture into which technology is
placed, so that communities can most effectively
use that technology to achieve
social, economic, political or cultural
goals.
A More Integrated Attempt
ONE EXAMPLE of a program based on
a community informatics approach is the
Gyandoot (which translates to “purveyor
of knowledge”) project in India. In
2000 in the southwest corner of Madhya
Pradesh, one of India’s poorest states, the
government established this digital effort
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MARK WARSCHAUER is vice chair of the department of education at the University of California,
Irvine, and is also affiliated with the university’s School of Information and Computer Science
and Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations. He is the founding
editor of Language Learning & Technology journal and author or editor of seven books on
technology, education and development. The editor of the “Papyrus News” e-mail news list
reporting on technology and society, Warschauer has conducted research in Egypt, China,
India, Brazil, Singapore and other countries, focusing on how diverse peoples and communities
make use of information technology for human and social development.
THE AUTHOR
NEW DELHI CHILDREN experiment with what is literally a hole-in-the-wall computer in 2000. The
minimally invasive education project was designed to insert technology into the environment so that
the children would learn to use the computer without guidance. Without direction, however, the
computer proved for the most part to be merely a high-tech toy.
COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
to bring more economic and political
power to the rural population, nearly
two thirds of whom are undernourished
and illiterate. Each village received a
computer kiosk, which is connected to
the others in a network. Local entrepreneurs
service the machines, and a small
team hired by the government creates
content for the Gyandoot intranet, based
on an analysis of the people’s social and
economic needs.
This content includes updated prices
of popular crops at the district, regional
and national markets, so that small farmers
can decide whether to harvest their
crop and where to sell it, without wasting
a day traveling to the district capital
for price checks. A complaint service lets
villagers report local problems, such as
malfunctioning hand pumps or teachers
failing to show up at schools. With villagers
quickly able to voice such concerns
digitally, government services have started
to improve.
Local kiosk managers operate the
computers, thus making the service,
which costs a few cents per use, accessible
even to the illiterate. Kiosk managers
also offer computer training to village
children for a small fee, thereby upping
the collective computer skills of the community
while affording additional income
to the managers. And Gyandoot is
used to connect with the area’s broad
socioeconomic initiatives, such as a
“healthiest child” campaign, which provides
information about vaccinations
and nutrition.
Gyandoot was inexpensive to launch,
because it involves only one computer
per village, and it is partly self-sustaining,
because kiosk operators are able to recover
some of their costs through small
fees to users. With its emphasis on meeting
user needs through small-scale, locally
run services, it has much in common
with the earlier model of telephone
kiosks that helped to extend phone access
throughout much of India. In the
nine months beginning in October 2001,
the Gyandoot kiosks had some 21,300
users, 80 percent of whom had annual incomes
of less than $300. The number of
users is a small percentage of the population,
but the benefits of the project, such
as improved government services, eventually
ripple outward to friends, families
and co-workers.
The magnitude of the Gyandoot success
story remains to be determined. But
the underlying approach—a combination
of well-planned and low-cost infusions of
technology with content development
and educational campaigns targeted to
social development—is surely a healthy
alternative to projects that rely on planting
computers and waiting for something
to grow.
Fine-Tuning in California
A DOMESTIC CASE, which I investigated
with doctoral candidate Jodie Wales,
also shows the importance of the community
informatics approach. California
high schools offer Advanced Placement
(AP) courses that give students college
credit and facilitate their admission to the
best universities. These courses are available
in dramatically unequal numbers,
however, largely in relation to the socioeconomic
status and ethnicity of student
populations. For example, in 1999 Beverly
Hills High School, which is 9 percent
African-American and Hispanic, offered
45 AP classes. Inglewood High School, in
a different part of the same metropolitan
area and with 97 percent black and Hispanic
students, offered only three such
courses.
To address this problem, in 2000 the
University of California Office of the President
and the university’s College Preparatory
Initiative engaged in a collaboration
with the Anaheim Union High
School District, which has a large Hispanic
population. The first effort was an
online AP course in macroeconomics, because
many of their students, even the
poorer of them, had some access to computers
and the Internet outside of school.
Attendees of several schools enrolled in
the courses, thus potentially overcoming
the problem of small and dispersed populations
of advanced students. The result:
only six of 22 students completed the
course. Some reasons became clear
through student surveys and interviews.
The online instructional format—with
students completing work independently
from their home computers—lacked suf-
ficient structure, teacher contact and peer
interaction to maintain students’ motivation
to cope with the challenging material.
The Hispanic students commented
most frequently that they preferred these
types of social support.
Still, the failure was fruitful. A revised
program the next year brought students
from several schools to a computer laboratory
at a central location, this time to
take an honors course, “Introduction to
Computer Science and the C Programming
Language.” Although the class was
still taught online to take advantage of the
distant expert instructor and the computer-
based curriculum, a local teacher
joined the students to answer questions
and provide general assistance. The combination
of online expert instruction and
face-to-face teacher and peer interaction
proved much more effective: 56 of 65 students
completed the course. Based on
these results, the University of California
College Preparatory Initiative abandoned
the previous model of pure online instruction
in exchange for the combined
online and face-to-face model. (Of course,
students may find an honors computer
class somewhat more accessible than an
AP macroeconomics course, or the former
might be better suited for the online setting.
Such points must also be considered
46 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN AUGUST 2003
The key issue is not unequal access
to computers but rather the unequal ways
that computers are used.
COPYRIGHT 2003 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
when devising the mode of instruction.)
More and more evidence points to
the need for a careful consideration of all
potential ramifications before applying
technology as an educational Band-Aid.
In fact, my research—together with that
of other educational investigators such as
Henry J. Becker of the University of California
at Irvine, Harold Wenglinsky of
the City University of New York and
Janet Schofield of the University of Pittsburgh
—shows that computer use in
schools is as likely to exacerbate inequality
as lessen it. The key issue is not
unequal access to computers but rather
the unequal ways that computers are
used. Our studies note that kindergarten
through 12th grade students who enjoy
a high socioeconomic status more frequently
use computers for experimentation,
research and critical inquiry, whereas
poor students engage in less challenging
drills and exercises that do not take
full advantage of computer technology.
In mathematics and English classes,
where such drills are common, poor students
actually have more access to computers
than do more affluent ones. Only
in science classes, which rely on experiments
and simulations, do wealthy students
use computers more. Once again, a
“digital divide” framework that focuses
on access issues alone fails to face these
broader inequalities in technology use
and learning.
Changing the Mind-set
PEOPLE ACCESS digital information in
a wide variety of ways and usually as part
of social networks involving relatives,
friends and co-workers. Literacy provides
a good analogy. Literacy does not
exist in a bipolar divide between those
who absolutely can and cannot read.
There are levels of literacy for functional,
vocational, civic, literary and scholarly
purposes. And people become literate
not just through physical access to books
but through education, communication,
work connections, family support and
assistance from social networks. Similarly,
technology can be well implemented
to augment and improve existing social
efforts and programs.
The bottom line is that there is no binary
digital divide and no single overriding
factor for determining—or closing—
such a divide. Technology does not exist
as an external variable to be injected
from the outside to bring about certain
results. It is woven into social systems
and processes. And from a policy standpoint,
the goal of bringing technology to
marginalized groups is not merely to
overcome a technological divide but instead
to further a process of social inclusion.
Realizing this objective involves not
only providing computers and Internet
links or shifting to online platforms but
also developing relevant content in diverse
languages, promoting literacy and
education, and mobilizing community
and institutional support toward achieving
community goals. Technology then
becomes a means, and often a powerful
one, rather than an end in itself.
It is important to note that the Bush
administration is cutting funding of programs
that foster access to technology.
Some might argue that such cuts are appropriate
if there is no digital divide, but
that reasoning is as specious as simplistic
solutions based on the notion of a divide.
The opposite of divide is multiply. Policy
planners should stop thinking in terms of
divides to be bridged. The combination
of carefully planned infusions of technology
with relevant content, improved
education and enhanced social support
can multiply those assets that communities
already have.
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Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. Mark Warschauer. MIT Press, 2003.
Who’s Wired and Who’s Not? Henry J. Becker in The Future of Children, Vol. 10, No. 2; 2000.
Available at www.futureofchildren.org/usr–doc/vol10no2art3.pdf
Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide. Mark Warschauer in First Monday, Vol. 7, No. 7; 2002.
Available at www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue7–7/warschauer/
Athena Alliance: www.athenaalliance.org/
Center for Social Informatics: www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/
Community Informatics Research and Applications Unit: www.cira.org.uk/
Community Technology Centers Network: www.ctcnet.org
Digital Divide Network: www.digitaldividenetwork.org/
MOR E TO E XPLORE
FARMERS ACCESS the Gyandoot intranet at a community computer facility in central India’s Dhar
district, where 60 percent of the 1.7 million residents live below the poverty line. The intranet provides
crop prices, official application forms, and a place to hold village auctions and to air public grievances.
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